Cleaning was actually quite easy—and in general, we’ve found that cleaning home extruders is easier than cleaning pasta rollers. Many of the pieces are dishwasher-safe on the top rack. For the pasta discs themselves, simply wait for any stuck dough to dry and then poke it out with the included cleaning tool.
What we didn’t like about the Philips 7000 Series Pasta and Noodle Maker
The only thing potentially not to like about this pasta maker is that it is a heavy kitchen appliance. That bodes well for durability, but does make it harder to move around the counter or into a cabinet.
How we tested the pasta makers
For manual pasta machines, we tested each model using a variety of fresh pasta recipes with varying consistencies. We tested low- and high-moisture egg-enriched pasta doughs, an eggless semolina pasta dough, and a thick, seeded cracker dough. We ran the dough through each machine using the full range of thickness settings. We also ran un-flattened dough through the second or third setting as opposed to the largest setting to see how well the machine handled jams. We then took the pasta sheets and tested the spaghetti cutter and the linguine or fettuccine cutter provided with each pasta machine. We used both the low- and high-moisture doughs to see how each pasta machine handled softer doughs, taking note of whether the extruded noodles stuck together or not.
After that, we hand-washed each machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions and paid attention to the overall build of each machine. Since pasta makers are prone to rusting, we used a dry cloth and a cleaning brush to clean away smudges and bits of dough.
For electric extruders, we did tests of spaghetti and tube noodles (the precise shape varied by machine, some had penne dies, some had rigatoni) with two different dough recipes: One that came with each machine to test how it worked using its own recommendations, the other, the extruder dough recipe from Missy Robbins excellent book Pasta: The Spirit and Craft of Italy’s Greatest Food. When we were done, we disassembled each pasta maker and cleaned it according to its instructions.
Other pasta makers we tested
KitchenAid Pasta Press Attachment
Given how well the roller attachment worked, we had high expectations for this extruder pasta maker attachment. However, the need to constantly feed walnut-size pieces of dough into the machine lost it major convenience points compared to the auto mixing appliances. And while it had a great attached cutter, too many of the noodles in the tube pasta test came out split. One thing we did notice, though, was that it worked better with more heavily kneaded dough. Most extruder dough is quite crumbly (so it doesn’t gum up the die), especially compared to dough for hand-shaped pasta. But we happened to have some extra dough from one of the other extruder tests that had been thoroughly kneaded by the machine, and when we ran it through the KitchenAid, we got the best spaghetti results of any extruder.
Hamilton Beach Electric Pasta and Noodle Maker
This pasta maker comes with some very nice features, including a built-in scale for weighing flour, a countdown timer, an extra-large mixing bowl for bigger batches, and a longer automatic pasta setting that allows time for the dough to rest in between kneading and extruding. It doesn’t, however, come with a cutting tool of any kind. The manual suggests scissors, which are excellent for cutting long noodles like spaghetti or fettuccine, but cannot cut short pasta like macaroni effectively—at least not from this machine. The real problem, though, was that the Hamilton Beach Electric Pasta and Noodle Maker stalled out three times during testing—twice with the machine’s recommended dough recipe and once with Missy Robbins’s dough recipe. It kept giving an error that the lid was not attached, even when it was. The fix was to apply lots of pressure when reattaching.
Cuisinart Pastafecto
The Cuisinart Pastafecto worked without incident; it’s just not as heavy-duty a machine as the Philips 7000. The tube pasta test also resulted in a lot of split noodles. But it’s easy to use and, if you’re into this sort of thing, it doubles as a bread machine. It also comes with the best selection of shapes including fusilli, rigatoni, and bucatini.
Imperia Pasta Maker
The Imperia is the Marcato’s closest manual pasta maker competition in terms of quality. The machine itself is a sturdy stainless steel, and the crank has an attractive wooden handle. However, the Imperia didn’t fare as well as during testing. It handled dough made with 00 flour without issue, but it jammed up on the widest setting during the preliminary roll of a sheet of all-purpose (AP) flour pasta dough. In the US, AP flour is much easier to find than finely-milled, low-protein 00 flour, which is the go-to in Italy for making pliant pasta dough. Since Americans are more likely to use AP flour when making pasta, we feel it makes more sense to recommend a machine that can handle that task with ease.
Isiler Pasta Machine
The Isler performed on par with the Marcato Atlas 150 in a number of important ways: Its roller operates smoothly and feeds dough, even thick slabs, through comparatively well. Its fettuccine and tagliolini attachments work pretty smoothly, cranking out pasta strands without jamming. However, the noodles did tend to stick to the machine a bit more. One reason to pick the Isiler: It’s roughly half the cost of the Marcato Atlas 150.